Scientists expressed deep concerns after U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced that the Trump administration plans to "update" a congressionally mandated series of reports on the impacts of the overheating planet, according to a report in the Guardian. 

The national climate assessments (NCA) have been produced and peer-reviewed by scientists five times since 2000 and are considered the premier studies on the subject, according to the report.

What's happening?

Wright, a former fossil fuel executive, told CNN's Kaitlin Collins that the administration was reviewing the NCA reports and claimed they "weren't fair in broad-based assessments of climate change." 

Earlier this year, President Trump dismissed 100s of scientists working on the next NCA, which was expected to come out in 2028. The Trump administration also recently deleted the website that hosted the assessments.

Wright's comments on CNN came shortly after the Department of Energy released a report downplaying the impacts of CO2-induced warming and claiming that "mitigation strategies may be misdirected." That report was slammed as a "farce" and "pseudoscience" by a host of scientists. 

"This is an agenda to promote fossil fuels," said Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists, one of the dismissed authors of the sixth NCA, according to the Guardian.

Cleetus added: "Secretary Wright just confirmed our worst fears — that this administration plans to not just bury the scientific evidence but replace it with outright lies to downplay the worsening climate crisis and evade responsibility for addressing it."

Why are the DOE's actions important?

If the proposals of the Department of Energy and other agencies under the Trump administration take hold, decades of scientific research and efforts to stem the tide and adverse impacts of the overheating of the planet could go by the boards. 

Around the same time, the DOE released its climate report and Wright announced the department was "updating" the NCA assessments, the Environmental Protection Agency released a proposal to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding, an Obama-era determination that led to regulations to curb pollution created by gas-fueled vehicles. 

According to the EPA, "If finalized, the proposal would repeal all resulting greenhouse gas emissions regulations." Obviously, this would be a serious blow to efforts to reduce industrial pollution and the transition to low- and no-emission vehicles.

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What's being done about these proposals?

The scientific community is quickly coalescing around efforts to counter the DOE and EPA proposals, with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine fast-tracking its own report on the latest evidence on the harms of polluting gases to counter the potential rollback of the Endangerment Finding.

And while there are headwinds in the U.S. against progress toward a green energy future, efforts in much of the international community continue apace. 

There is even some bipartisanship in Congress on the importance of renewable energy. So sending a letter to your senator or representative expressing your support for clean energy or making an appearance at a town hall may not be in vain.

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